Tokamaks

How can scientists foresee and avoid massive disruptions in plasma, a key hurdle to bringing the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars to Earth to generate electricity? “You can’t have a prototype reactor if it’s disrupting,” says William Tang, a physicist at PPPL and a Princeton University professor who leads a project to forecast disruptions through artificial intelligence (AI) — the branch of computer science that is transforming scientific inquiry and industry.  

Machine learning (ML), a form of artificial intelligence that recognizes faces, understands language and navigates self-driving cars, can help bring to Earth the clean fusion energy that lights the sun and stars. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are using ML to create a model for rapid control of plasma — the state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions — that fuels fusion reactions.

Lithium, the light silvery metal used in everything from pharmaceutical applications to batteries that power your smart phone or electric car, could also help harness on Earth the fusion energy that lights the sun and stars. Lithium can maintain the heat and protect the walls inside doughnut-shaped tokamaks that house fusion reactions, and will be used to produce tritium, the hydrogen isotope that will combine with its cousin deuterium to fuel fusion in future reactors.

Scientists open a bold new chapter in fusion research.